Invest in Transformation (eBook)

LEADERSHIP AND TRANSFORMATION

Leadership, as I define it, is energizing a community of people toward their own transformation so that they can accomplish a shared mission.1 And that transformation cannot begin until the level of trust is high enough for the group to even consider what it will cost to be transformed.

Adaptive change requires leaders to face the challenges of a changing world or disrupted environment with hard decisions around core values, with hard questions about what we need to learn (and unlearn!), and with hard truths about the necessity of our own transformation. Adaptive change requires leaders to become what they are not yet already.

Transformation is what makes adaptive leadership adaptive.

Adaptive leadership inspires and equips people to see beyond their own personal goals, security, and visions of success to collaborate to bring about the change necessary for the organization to thrive in a different (and often disruptive) environment.

Since this is not at all natural, the transformation process requires leaders to “keep the work at the center of people’s attention,” and to pace and structure the change process so there is time for the members of the organization to absorb the changes, the losses they must face, and the transformation needed.2

Like a chef trying to slowly sauté onions so that they will become softened, browned, and flavorful without sticking or burning, the leader must continually pay attention, adjust the heat, and every now and then stir the pot to keep the process going.

A group facing challenges requires deep transformation into the very best version of who they can possibly be.

“Leadership is disappointing your own people at a rate they can absorb,” Marty Linsky told an interviewer when describing the challenges of adaptive leadership.3 And whenever I quote the line in a seminar or speaking engagement, it always gets a laugh and a lot of nodding heads.

Leaders recognize themselves—and the challenges confronting them—in this statement. They understand now, if they didn’t when they took the job, that unlike being a manager who fixes problems, sorts out solutions, makes plans that align, and allocates resources (and thus make people happy!), leaders often are faced with taking people through a process of personal and organizational transformation in order to face these disruptive challenges in front of them.

A diagram shows that adaptive challenges (1) require learning; (2) result in facing loss; (3) reveal competing values that must be named and navigated; (4) require experimentation and failure; and (5) result in resistance that must be faced with resilience.

It is a process that they often resist and a reality that makes leading any group of people really hard. To be sure, when we took on a leadership challenge, we naturally assumed that there would be challenges and that some days would be hard. (“It’s the hard that makes it great!” as Tom Hanks’s gruff baseball manager character in A League of Their Own said.) But what most of us didn’t expect is how hard it would become to lead the very people who asked you to step into the leadership role. We didn’t really expect to have to face resistance and even opposition from the staff, partners, and board members who asked us to take on the challenge. We figured they would have our backs and that they were ready for the rough road ahead.

Until we realized that they weren’t.

The often subconscious expectation of our people was that we would make things better for them. We would “right the ship” or “trim the sails” or get us going “full steam ahead.” They may have expected that there would be some rough seas, but mostly they assumed that our leadership would make an organization (one they belong to and have invested in) a more efficient and effective version of what it already is. The hard news to deliver is that a group facing challenges requires deep transformation into the very best version of who they can possibly be—transformation that requires people to endure loss.

Those losses are not just cosmetic but go to the level of personal and organizational identity:

• ➜ Reevaluating legacy commitments

• ➜ Reconsidering unspoken loyalties

• ➜ Shifting unquestioned behaviors and attitudes

• ➜ Especially: naming and navigating competing values

Adaptive leadership confronts the gaps in what we say we believe and what we actually do each day. It queries people on where they need to grow and what they need to learn.

And most painfully, adaptive leadership asks people to face what they must leave behind in order to move the organization forward into uncharted territory.

An ink sketch shows a stack of letters that says “What we do” and another stack of letters that says “What we say.” There is a big gap between them, and a man is standing on top of the “What we do” stack and pointing emphatically at the gap between the two stacks. Two people are standing on the ground contemplating the big gap.

CHANGE AND LOSS

“People don’t resist change, they resist loss,” Heifetz and Linsky have taught us.4

And this reality helps us better understand the most delicate skill required of change leaders: to utilize both empathy and courage to shape the “disappointment” of your own people . . . at a rate they can absorb, as Linsky so memorably put it. To bring about transformation without losing all trust from your people, to pace the transformation in a way that will enable you to invest the trust you have in the process, ultimately leads to your organization becoming people who can face the necessary losses and take on the challenges in front of them.

That’s what this book is about. It is about learning the skill set and developing the adaptive mindset that moves from trust to transformation. Together we will...